


Astra Inclinant, Sed Non Obligant

by bosspigeon



Series: A Dangerous Woman [4]
Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout: New Vegas
Genre: Friendship, Gen, Gomorrah (Fallout: New Vegas), Implied/Referenced Drug Addiction, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Memory Loss, Omertas (Fallout: New Vegas), Original Character(s), Past Head Trauma, and the resulting angst, arcade tries to be a good friend, arcade/female courier friendship, but they are trying, gratuitous southern twanging, grungy lesbian cowboy, i got to use the phrase 'black don't crack' and i regret nothing, neither of them are sure how to friend, no hetero bros, obligatory latin, post hostile gomorrah takeover, pov arcade gannon, yes her name is danger
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-06
Updated: 2016-09-06
Packaged: 2018-08-13 11:27:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,528
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7975183
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bosspigeon/pseuds/bosspigeon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Arcade tags along while the courier attempts to track down her lost memories, and starts to accept that he may just be playing a supporting role in someone else's story.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Astra Inclinant, Sed Non Obligant

The battered green truck comes to a rumbling, rolling stop just outside the gate surrounding the Dino Dee-Lite motel. There’s a grim set to Danger’s mouth, clenched tight around a cigarette. It’s a look she hasn’t been able to shake for well over a week now. She’s not an ebullient woman on a good day, but there’s been an aura of something clinging to her like miasma since she walked out of Gomorrah, bloody and scowling.

Word travels surprisingly fast in the wasteland, and at near lightspeed around the Strip itself, and she hadn’t even cleared the lobby of the Lucky 38 before Mister New Vegas was crooning about a hostile takeover of Gomorrah. “I guess there’s a reason they call her Danger,” he chuckled, just as the elevator dinged. She ignored her companions peeking around the corner over the dining room, gawking, really, and the door to her bedroom slammed behind her. The hallway stank like blood for hours after.

For a few days after that, no one sees much of her. “Business,” she grunts when she slaps on her rattan cowboy hat in lieu of the signature black one, a scuffed leather duster brushing her calves. She disappears into the fiery gates every time, and it takes surprisingly little time for the buzz and chaos to settle back into normalcy. Arcade does a bit of… reconnaissance work, pokes into Gomorrah to take a look around (and if he admires the physiques of a few of the male dancers there, well, that’s nobody’s business but his own) and see what new management has done for the place.

It doesn’t take a week before Julie is telling him there’s been a number of fidgety, chem-addled women (and one or two men) brought by the Fort by his “new friend” for treatment. Straight from Gomorrah, she adds. Some of them stay behind, asking for work, wanting to help, and she says they look to the towering courier like Julie imagines mortals would look on the face of an angel.  _ Terror and awe? _ Arcade thinks. Accurate.  _ Be not afraid _ .

“There was a girl,” Danger tells him in the truck, rattling along the dusty broken highway. The windows are tinted dark, the overhead light flickers with every rough bump. “A Gomorrah girl. Joana. She knew me from before. I… didn’t remember nothin’ about her, but I knew… I knew I…”

“You loved her,” Arcade fills in easily. Her eyes are on the road, heavy brows drawn, the faint lines around her mouth deepening. (It’s hard to tell how old she is. She could be older than he is, could be even older than that. He’d tried asking once.  _ Black don’t crack _ , she’d told him smugly, dark eyes twinkling as he’d lamented the faint crinkles around his own eyes.)

“Mmhm,” she mumbles back. “Could feel it in my chest, the moment I laid eyes on ‘er. She was real pretty. Real sad too. Don’t know if I could tell before,” she taps her middle finger against her forehead, against the scar. “Don’t right know if I’d’a cared. Said I’d visit her a lot. Least it seemed I was good to her. Lord knows the poor girl needed somebody to be.”

“Did she know anything?” Arcade nudges, tone carefully restrained. He’s close-lipped enough about his own past, so perhaps it isn’t fair of him to be so curious about hers, but, honestly, who could blame him? He knows at least half a dozen people personally who’d die for the tiniest scrap about the mysterious Danger. He’s not ashamed to be one of them.

“Not a lick,” she rumbles, dark as thunder. “Just told me… Just told me I was sweeter’n most. Liked that I paid to eat her out for two hours, at any rate.” There’s a flash of a smirk there, the cigarette twitching with it, and Arcade groans dramatically, just to see the smile hold a little longer.

“Thank you for that,” he says, “No, really, thank you. There’s nothing I enjoy more than you lauding your sexual prowess while I remain--  tragically-- single and celibate.” He almost feels like saying  _ Gross, you’re practically my sister! _ Childish, and true, but perhaps… Perhaps too personal. He knows next to nothing about her, and she him, but still. The familiarity is there. He can’t say that for many people.

“I helped her get out,” Danger continues once the levity has whisked by, like a tumbleweed. “She, uh, she had a man. An Omerta lackey, fell in love with her and got chased off. The damn fool was still hangin’ around though, practically in their backyard and they couldn’t find him.” She scoffs. “Those idjits couldn’t find their asses with both hands if ya drew ‘em a fuckin’ map.” She chews on the cigarette filter, flicks it to the opposite side of her mouth with her tongue. “I’ve met brahmin smarter’n that bunch. I was doin’ ‘em a favor.”

“That’s… very noble of you,” he offers. “Helping her like that. Very selfless.”

“Wasn’t selfless,” Danger grunts. “She wouldn’t’a lasted another year in that place. They keep their girls doped up and dependent, kill the ones that think about leavin’ as an example. You ain’t seen what went on in that place, Gannon.” There’s something haunted about her, the whites of her eyes near-glowing in the dim light, mouth set grim and hard. “I’d rather never see her again than watch her waste away.”

“I don’t know,” he near-whispers. It feels inappropriate to talk too loudly now, the truck rattling around them, bottles on the shelves, guns on the racks. He’s looking right at her, sees a giant radscorpion whisk by out the window over her shoulder. “Sounds pretty noble to me.”

“You ain’t as cynical as you try to play, Gannon,” she tells him softly. “There’s still a light in you yet.” She exhales deep through her nose, shakes her head. “Nah, I ain’t… I ain’t noble. Don’t think I ever was. Don’t think I want to know how bad I might’a been.”

“Then what are we doing?” he asks her.

Primm is behind them, the old man, Nash, pointing them towards Novac.  _ “I don’t make a habit of prying into the personal lives of my couriers. If anyone can give you what you’re missing, it’s the boy you ran with before, Sal. He stays down in Novac, if you wanna ask him.” _

Her fingers clench tight around the wheel, knuckles dry and chalky-white. “Gotta try, don’t I?” she whispers, tobacco-rough. “Even if… even if I don’t wanna know, I gotta know, you know?”

It sounds incoherent, silly, even, phrased that way. But he doesn’t laugh. He knows, in her place, he’d be doing the same. They’re cut from the same cloth, the two of them. Curious by nature, even to a fault. Have to stick their noses into everything even if they risk getting them chopped off. “Yes,” he says simply.

There’s little conversation beyond that, and even Arcade is loathe to break the brooding silence. He stares out the window, watches the wasteland go by in a blur of beige and brown, perhaps dozes a bit against the cool glass,discreetly wiping away smeared drool when a hard bump jostles him awake again.

Novac is quiet in the early hours, barely a handful of people milling about. It’s always the best time to visit, in Arcade’s opinion, though he doesn’t say so aloud. As far as the courier is concerned, he’s never been. He hopes Daisy isn’t out and about this early. He knows she likes to work when things are a little more active, lively as she is. Danger tosses him a string of caps, tells him to secure their breakfast from the tent that acts as a bar. He’s doing as bid when a little dark-haired blur rushes by, makes a beeline for the courier’s truck.

“I knew it was you!” peals a little voice, and he whirls to see tiny calloused hands tugging at Danger’s duster. His heart drops into his stomach. He’s never seen her interact with children, but he knows she doesn’t take kindly to being grabbed, and he hurries back to defuse whatever may be brewing. Her eyes turn downwards-- wide and startled, and she’s not wearing her hat so her scar is in full view. The child winces. “ _ Jesus _ , Auntie Dee, what happened to your head?” she blurts, with all the grace and tact of a charging bighorner.

“ _ Auntie… _ ?” Danger rumbles, sluggish. She always seems to stall when startled, like an old engine.

“Papa said it wasn’t you, just ‘cause you cut your hair,” the little one continues. “But I told him there’s no one as tall as you around.” She’s a scruffy little thing, like most kids these days, with curly hair cut in a messy, bouncy bob. She’s wearing a little denim pinafore over knee-length shorts, and sneakers with no socks. She’s missing some teeth, too. “It’s been ages, though, why didn’t you come see us last time you were in town?”

“I… I-I didn’t…” Danger’s hands are shaking a bit, she looks near-panicked, staring down at the child with an expression struggling between confusion and vague terror. Arcade sees fit to intervene.

“You must be mistaken,” he says, sliding between courier and child. The moment he speaks, it’s like a switch is flipped. The little girl goes from bouncy and cheerful to scowling and stiff in a heartbeat.   
  
“I don’t talk to strangers,” she snaps. She’s missing a few teeth in the front, so her attempts at looking fierce fall flat.

Danger is still stalling behind him, silent, eerily so. And then, “Magda?” She says it like it’s only just come to her, like the answer to a question she just couldn’t seem to remember, even as it itched at the back of her mind.

The switch flips again. “That’s right! What happened to you, Auntie? C’mon, we gotta get you to Papa.” She turns her attention to Arcade again and sneers. “I  _ guess  _ you can come.”

She grabs Danger’s big, rough hand in one of her own and hauls her across the intersection, towards one of the little bungalows at the edge of town. It’s a cute little place, the picket fence freshly painted. There’s prickly pear growing in the front yard, along with some particularly hardy desert scrub. There’s a man there too, stout and hairy, if a bit on the short side, and he’s sprinkling a squat little cactus with water from a dented metal watering can. He looks up as they approach, smiles when he sees the little girl leading the charge. He opens his mouth to greet them, but--

“I  _ told  _ you it was her, Papa! It’s Auntie Dee!”

Thick brows climb upwards, and then he spots Danger, hanging back awkwardly, well, as much as she can with a tiny, but determined child tugging her along like a pull-toy. “Looks like you were right, Maggie. And she’s brought a friend! There’s a surprise!”   


“It looks like she got shot in the head, Papa!” Magda exclaims, pointedly tactlessly to Danger’s forehead.

He doesn’t look very surprised to hear that, oddly enough. “Wouldn’t put it past her. Well, come on inside, I think there’s still some leftovers from breakfast.” He sets down the watering can and leads the way inside. The little house is cluttered, but cozy, most surfaces littered with bits of machinery and electronics and various tools. There’s a car’s engine pulled apart in the corner by the sofa, and a working television flickers with some pre-war cartoon on holotape. The wall between the kitchen and the living room has been knocked out, leaving the area a lot more open, even with the mess of mechanics. “Sorry about the mess, me’n Maggie started on a new project this week-- you know how it is.”   


Danger’s brain finally seems to have caught up with her, and she pulls back, towards the door. She looks confused, but less like a spooked animal. “C-can’t rightly say I do, friend,” she says stiffly. There’s still a tremor, something that tells Arcade she’ll be reaching for a dose of steady after this. He squashes down the impulse to check her vitals. Reminds himself that, in this moment, he’s her friend, not her doctor.

The man looks confused for a moment, then his eyes catch the ugly knot of scar tissue marring her forehead, the brahmin-in-the-headlights look in her eye. He sits down on the overstuffed, ugly plaid sofa and stretches out a bit, and the little girl plops down next to him. Without needing to be invited, Danger sits in the mismatched leather armchair. Arcade remains standing, hanging back and playing the silent observer. “Just how much did that kick in the head take, Danger?”

“So you know ‘bout it already,” she rumbles back.

The man chuckles. “Well, when there’s talk on the radio about a Mojave Express courier shot in the head but too stubborn to die kicking up a fuss all over Nevada, it’s not too hard to put two and two together. We’re not all as smart as you are, Dee, but it’s not too hard to guess.”

“Nash said I knew you,” she says, strained around the eyes and mouth, fingers twitching for a cigarette, but too weighed down with old southern manners to ask to smoke inside. “Said we was friends.”

“Yep,” the man says. “Good friends. I’ve known you since Maggie here was still in diapers.”

Danger looks to the child, who’s straining forward on the couch, little fingers digging into the cushions. Silently begging  _ remember me, remember me _ . The lanky courier looks deeply, deeply sad that she can’t. “What’s your name?” she asks him instead.

“Salvatore,” he says, and there’s a kick to his accent that wasn’t there before. “Salvatore Abascal Dominguez.” He smiles a little. “Most call me Sal. And this little delight,” he adds, hauling the child towards him with one hairy arm, “is  _ mi preciosa _ , Magdalena.” Magda squirms and giggles as he blows a raspberry against her cheek. Danger’s naturally hangdog expression droops even more.

“I don’t remember you,” she says softly. “Not a bit.”

“That’s okay!” Magda crows, slapping a hand over her father’s mouth and pushing his head away. She smiles, all brightness and missing teeth. She’s standing on the couch now, bouncing a little. “We can remind you!”

“It’s not that easy,  _ mija _ ,” Salvatore says, “And sit down, you’ll break the springs even more.” She drops down hard, and said springs squeal their protest. Salvatore sighs and rolls his eyes. He curls an arm around her again and smiles at Danger. “Don’t try to force anything on our account, Dee,” he says gently. “We got all the time in the world to figure this out.” He pats Magda on the hip. “Maggie, why don’t you go see if Miss Daisy needs help with anything, eh?”

The same as any child who gets any variant of “why don’t you let the grown-ups have some privacy,” Magda frowns, and Arcade hides a chuckle behind his hand. She’s got her father’s severe brows, and when they draw downwards, it scrunches up her round, dark face like a little thundercloud. Still, she obeys, and clomps out the door with a backwards glower at Arcade. He tries not to laugh.

“How old is she?” Arcade asks, giving Danger a bit of time to collect her thoughts.

“Just eleven this past winter,” Salvatore says with a smile. He’s got a warm face, round, dusted with freckles from exposure to the wasteland sun, and a neatly-trimmed dark beard. Attractive, in a cuddly sort of way. “Sorry about the attitude. Takes her a bit to warm up to strangers.”

“I take no offense,” Arcade says magnanimously. It’s a good attitude for a child to have these days. Dangerous times. “We’ve yet to be properly introduced. Arcade Gannon.” He comes closer, offers a hand, and Salvatore shakes it. He’s got a firm grip, pleasantly rough hands, big and warm.   
“Nice to meet you. Friend of Danger’s?”

“You could say that,” he says wryly.

“Dangerous business, that,” Salvatore says with a sly little smile. Danger groans loudly from the armchair.

“S’always fuckin’ puns with you, innit?” she rumbles. Sal’s eyes light up.

“Well, there’s somethin’ you remember!” he chuckles, leaning forward to pat her hand. “Why don’t you bring me up to speed, then we can see what else we can poke loose.”

She tells him everything, and it’s honestly the wordiest Arcade’s ever seen her. It’s as if she remembers, instinctively, her bond with the strange, warm little man. She may not recall the specifics, but something in her is comfortable with him, in his cozy bungalow, and in his presence. She tells him about Goodsprings, about Benny, and Benny’s untimely end. Salvatore listens, and when she’s done she just looks at him, hard and intense. Most cower under that sort of look, but the other courier looks nonplussed.

“So where d’you fit in, in before?” she asks him sharply. “How d’we know each other?”   


“Work, mostly,” Sal replies with an easy smile. “Met on a run about ten years back. It was a long haul, so Nash sent two of us. You learn a lot about someone when you’re holed up in a metal shack hiding from a dust storm for two days.”

“What was I like?” she asks, straining towards him. Desperate, trying not to seem so. It’s strange to see her so unguarded.

“Uh, near as I can tell,” Sal hums thoughtfully, “about the same? Maybe a little...  I don’t know, maybe a little softer than before? I won’t say I knew everything about you, because I didn’t. You were tight-lipped at the best of times. I think you mentioned once you came from down south-- which isn’t hard to guess with the accent, but that’s really it. But there was always this sort of hard edge to you before. No matter how many years I knew you there was a kind of, coldness you couldn’t seem to shake.”

It doesn’t seem to be quite the answer Danger was looking for, but it’s more than she knew before. She exhales, slow and easy. “I’m headed out for a smoke, then.” She pushes herself upright, knees popping, and pats down her pockets. “Gannon, you coming?”

“Oh, um, of course.”

“I’ll see about getting you both something to eat,” Salvatore says, standing up himself. He’s picked up on the mood his words have bestowed, but doesn’t seem too bothered by it. He putters off to the kitchen, and Danger towards the door, Arcade on her heels.

They’re leaning up against the rough stucco wall, looking out over the fresh-painted fence, Arcade fiddling with the knobs on his plasma pistol, Danger nursing a cigarette against an errant breeze. He doesn’t look at her when he asks what exactly she was expecting to learn.

“More’n this,” she says with a sigh. Her hands are steadier now, with the nicotine to soothe her damaged nerves. He’s hoping she’ll decided against that hit of Steady after all. “I dunno, I just… I was hopin’ for somethin’ more, I guess.”

“You’ve got a friend now,” Arcade offers, nudging her lightly in the ribs with his elbow. “One whole friend that you didn’t coerce or pay, and he doesn’t even owe you a life debt. That has to count for something,  _ Auntie Dee _ .”

She scoffs and flicks her ashes petulantly at him, and he brushes them off his coat before they can singe it. “Suppose it’s better’n findin’ out I was some… some fuckin’ slaver before,” she whispers. And there it is, the deep-rooted fear he’s wondered about. The one that wakes her up in the night, choking on nothing and grasping for her gun. He wonders what the nightmares are about. Wonders if even she can remember. 

“ _ Astra inclinant, sed non obligant _ ,” he recites, just as the front door creaks open. Salvatore appears, and when he hears the easy Latin rolling off Arcade’s tongue, he tenses. Arcade meets his eyes, and the man smiles stiffly, but there’s something in his eyes now, a quiet wariness.

“C’mon, Gannon, there’s only so long I can focus on those fuckin’ books you leave lyin’ around. My Latin ain’t up to snuff yet.”

“The stars incline us, they do not bind us,” he translates. “Whatever you were before, there’s no need to feel that affects who you are now. As far as anyone you know is concerned, you were always  _ this  _ Danger. Stubborn, crafty, reckless, an  _ amazing  _ conversationalist.” He waits for her huffed laugh before he adds, earnestly, “ And a friend.”

Salvatore hands him a plate piled with pepper-dotted scrambled eggs, and a healthy dollop of pork’n’beans. He looks at Danger, who smiles. “Your favorite,” Sal offers.

“Thanks,” she mumbles. She puts out her cigarette against the wall and flicks the butt over the fence, then takes the fork he gives her and digs in. “You too,” she adds around a mouthful, looking pointedly at Arcade. “Thanks.”

He stuffs a bite of eggs into his mouth and looks away, trying valiantly not to smile. “No problem.”

**Author's Note:**

> idk i just enjoy writing things from Arcade's pov. i'm not very good yet, but that's what practice is for! sorry if things don't 100% make sense, there's references to things i haven't covered yet, bc i have no fucking clue how to write a single unified linear plot lmao


End file.
